


Circles

by AngriestPotato



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen, also they'll all show up just wait for'em, i'm rolling in tropes here, obligated reincarnation au, with coffee shop au thrown on top
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7144193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngriestPotato/pseuds/AngriestPotato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>my destiny remains, any sign can be written inside a circle</p>
<p>The memories come as flashes; red and heat and someone screaming a name he doesn’t recognize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. here, again

**Author's Note:**

> title's taken from Yourcenar's Fires and so is the first line of the summ jsyk, also this was born from 2 combined prompts because, well I love au's I have no excuse

The memories come as flashes; red and heat and someone screaming a name he doesn’t recognize, but he knows they mean him, he’s in danger and he needs to do something about it.

  
The therapist says it’s anxiety, tells him to try and find out what it is that triggers him; he’s sent home with nothing but his thumb up his ass and breathing exercises, and he’s somewhat relieved the worst of these panic attacks to date happened the night before and not back when he still lived with his parents. His mother’s face when they started is burnt into his mind and that first one had been nowhere near this; he didn’t found himself waking up covered in cold sweat then, didn’t reach under the pillow because he was somehow sure there was supposed to be a gun there.

  
Back then he didn’t lock himself in the bathroom and threw up in the tub when there was no gun, just the same scream as always.

Coincidentally, at 14 he didn’t have a meeting with his newest –first, and probably last if he was honest– business partner early the next morning.

  
He only hopes the man who wrote him the most convincing email ever is willing to wait for him more than ten minutes; after all, this benefited both of them right? His every contact was tinted with desperation to buy the place.

He can’t say selling what used to be his family’s store was a difficult decision, his parents had retired years ago, but something had compelled him to take the man on his riskier offer: quitting his safe –no matter how soul sucking– accounting job in order to open a coffee shop with a stranger.

It’s a risk so uncharacteristic that even the cat side eyed him when he wrote back a yes.

  
Maybe that’s the anxiety too, imagining his pet judges his choices; but rushing to the building where the stranger has already set up shop he can’t help but let relief catch up to him. The man is still there, all leather jacket and ripped jeans, and he doesn’t even care that the look of him’s way less professional than expected.

_He’s there_ , the thought almost makes him laugh as the man runs one hand through his hair, flicking the ashes from his cigarette with the other in an annoyed gesture, _he’s right there, like always, Hayato…_

  
The name in his head is like a car crash, like the drop of a roller coaster, like the bullet that finally kills him while this man, his _best friend_ , shouts his name. And he’s half aware of his knees hitting the floor and the tears running down his cheeks but he can’t care when Gokudera -or whoever he is now, here where he himself’s not Tsuna anymore- is making his way to him, worry so clear and familiar on his face.

  
“Hey, man, are you okay?” the voice isn’t the same, but the tone is, and this is Gokudera, no doubt, alive and well and he’s _missed him so_.

  
And Tsuna can’t speak, can hardly breathe while he’s guided inside, dropped gently at one of the tables and promptly left alone; a part of him, down at the back of his mind is aware that most of his savings have gone into this place and he doesn’t even remember the layout of the building well enough to know where Hayato has disappeared to.

At least the two minutes he spends by himself there allow him to calm down some and at the very minimum stop crying hysterically; but then his right hand’s coming back with a cup of coffee and he feels another wave of memories coming on.

  
“Drink this and don’t fucking pass out on me, okay?” the hand with the cup reaches over to him, yet stops halfway across the table, uncertain, there’s a beat of silence before the man adds “I’ve lived this before.”

  
Tsuna tries and fails to not break down laughing, burying his head between his crossed arms, forehead almost touching the cold metal of the table with an involuntary mumble of _Gokudera, god…_

The sound of the cup shattering on the floor startles them both; Tsuna is pretty much convinced that Hayato didn’t even notice he had let go of it with the way he keeps staring at him, green eyes watering.

  
“Decimo?” it’s barely more than a croak but _fuck_ Tsuna’s crying again, reaching for his sleeve, his hand whatever he can comfortably get to from here because he doesn’t know if Gokudera’s about to dissolve into thin air the moment he stops paying attention.

  
The storm guardian bends in half, but he doesn’t pull away, he actually presses his face against Tsuna’s wrist instead and he can see him curling in on himself, gritting his teeth to weather the memories.

 

…

 

“I’m sorry, Tsuna…”

  
It’s a whisper over Gokudera’s coffee cup, half an hour later when they’re sitting in one of the couches in the back of the shop, shoulders touching, and it takes Tsuna a moment to figure out what he means; but when he turns to look at him, his friend’s wearing the same expression he did as he bleed out on the floor of his own headquarters.

  
“We didn’t… I couldn’t…”

  
“No”

  
He tries to smile, forces a thin grimace somewhat turning up at the corners on his face, he racks his brain for something other than the very ugly truth of his immediate selfish thought and comes out empty handed.

  
“I didn’t have to see _you_ die, any of you,” Tsuna offers because it’s the only thing he has to offer, and he thinks that maybe this time around he can brave to be a little more honest, “that was the best thing you could’ve done for me.”

  
Hayato laughs, against all odds, a small sound in the back of his throat more like a snort than anything else as he reaches for a cigarette.

  
“Yamamoto said something like that,” there’s a crack to his voice and Tsuna feels it too, the sudden weight in his chest when he thinks the rain guardian might not even exist now, “back then, after the funeral; I said it was bullshit. He’s gonna give me so much shit for it when we find him; he has to be around somewhere, probably playing baseball.”

  
Gokudera rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands, ignoring the way Tsuna’s stare is steadily turning watery again and does him the favour of not commenting on the way his voice is barely holding on.

  
“Probably playing baseball,” Tsuna concedes, and at least there’s hope, even if he feels like he was never built for it.


	2. back home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man knows him, apparently, since he’s headed directly for him with no signs of stopping or changing course; and even that is a regular occurrence, his face is dime a dozen, he gets mistakenly recognized at least once a week.
> 
> What isn’t a regular occurrence is how he doesn’t even slow down as he comes closer and closer, and then the man crashes into him.

His life was always a normal one; he grew up in an average family with an older brother and a twin, went to an average college and graduated with average grades. He looked pleasantly average even, if a little tall.

  
The only thing out of the norm was the imaginary friends; they had stayed for too long, up until he started middle school if he remembers correctly, and he shared them with both his brother and sister.

It was a thing to behold, and he supposes they drove their parents mad for a while with the very specific obsessions that came with them. They left grape lollipops strewn around the house for the little cow, unwrapped of course, for efficiency; they snuck out of bed in the middle of the night to lie in the backyard with the boy that talked to the stars. And every family reunion they still laugh at the story of the time they threw a collective tantrum over an alien shaped balloon because one of their imaginary friends had liked it and they wanted to buy it for him.

The house felt almost empty when they went away, however relieved mom and dad were, and he and his siblings took to sleeping in a single bed for a few months after the fact, before being teenagers took over their entire lives.

  
Friends, schoolwork, a few girlfriends, a boyfriend, track; for a long time those had been perfect distractions for energy he would otherwise spend thinking about what could’ve happened to those people they had made up in their tiny fraternal hive mind or, when a dark mood struck, what exactly had gone wonky in his head for him to develop such a strong emotional connection with them.

Now he has work, and being sous-chef is harsh no matter how small the restaurant, so he doesn’t think of his imaginary friends, he didn’t think about them in years. Frankly they wouldn’t have come to mind at all if the man shoving his way towards him across the packed subway station didn’t somehow remind him of them.

  
The guy’s anything but average, his pierced brows set in a frown instead of the politely vacant expression most people wear in the subway; he’s damn sure that if one of his childhood neighbours were like that he’d remember them. Besides, he doesn’t recognize the face, so it can’t be someone he used to know bringing back memories of that time; he doesn’t know the man, it’s that simple.

The man knows him, apparently, since he’s headed directly for him with no signs of stopping or changing course; and even that is a regular occurrence, his face is dime a dozen, he gets mistakenly recognized at least once a week.

  
What isn’t a regular occurrence is how he doesn’t even slow down as he comes closer and closer, and then the man crashes into him.

  
Well, no; to tell the truth he‘s not just crashed into, he’s being positively bear hugged by a stranger in the middle of the fucking metro platform, which is awkward even beyond the way his breath is knocked out of his lungs when the stranger hooks an arm around his shoulders and fits him snug against him.

The man holds on, no matter how stiffly he just stands there trying to figure out what to do, as if to underline that it wasn’t a mistake; and when his brain finally reacts it does so in overdrive. He can feel the ghost of the man’s heartbeat and smell cigarette smoke on him, like he did every time they had to hide in a foxhole, waiting for the perfect shot.

He freezes at the thought, at the clear mental image of the undergrowth and the orange trees in the distance, the sudden taste of blood in the air; the man laughs against his shoulder, a high note of hysteria in the sound like the time they almost got shot into mincemeat through the branches, and finally he understands.

 

“I don’t remember you as a hugger, Gokudera” he half mumbles, right as Hayato pulls away, eyes bright with tears.  
  


“Shut the fuck up, baseball idiot,” his smile is the same as always, razor sharp, and he doesn’t fight it when Gokudera grabs two fistfuls of his hair to take a good look at him.

 

It’s the searching look that does it, makes him cry himself because there’s no way the storm guardian is still his brother in this life, but he _is_ here looking at him as if they were both standing in that clearing again with Tsuna unreachable even a mere five feet away.

Then, as he looks over Gokudera’s shoulder, there’s brown eyes set on him; the most recognizable eyes on the planet, full of worry for half a second until he smiles –and he can’t contain it, not even if he tried– and Tsuna’s face stretches into the shakiest grin he’s seen.

 

“Hi, Yamamoto”

 

By now they’re starting to attract looks, three adult men crying in the middle of a crowded station, but fuck he can’t find reasons to care. He reaches out for Tsuna, pull him close and he’s _breathing_ ; he manages somehow to hold both guardians in his arms, the entire world could be laughing at them and he wouldn’t care at all.


	3. unfinished puzzles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s still a struggle to pretend she’s a normal child, her other, adult self is always there; like a ghost tethered to her skin.

Her first asthma attack is little more than a blur; the sick rush of fighting for breath, rolling around in the grass of the playground while her cousin takes off, screeching for help. The sunlight’s blinding even through her eyelids, the world nothing but flashes of yellow and white and the faces strobing across her vision, every face she thought she forgot, before she passes out.  
  
She wakes up at the hospital with the scent of freshly torn grass still on her hands and scares every adult even more by sobbing quietly throughout the entire examination; the fully aware kind of tears that seem off in a child her age, no matter how well behaved she always was. Made worse by a bout of mutism that gets her escorted to the psych wing upstairs to talk to a friendly doctor who doesn’t know her –this her or the old her either– and so finds nothing too worrying about the vaguely melancholic look she can’t keep off her features at the moment.

In fact it isn’t until she’s climbing in the backseat of her mother’s SUV and catches a glance of her cousin and the smile on her face that doesn’t belong on a moderately wealthy, pampered twelve year old that she starts crying again. She finally lapses into the kind of sobs that leave her breathless, holding onto the girl next to her, mumbling against her shoulder. _M.M I remember, what do we do? what do we do?_

_  
I don’t know,_ is the only response she gets, and she tries not to wonder how long has this conversation been in the making; for how long M.M. has known who they both were and shouldered it on her own.

_I don’t know, Chrome._

 

She doesn’t expect the larger, warm hands on hers, lacing their fingers together, but she cries harder at the feeling anyway. Whatever beef M.M. held against her in that past life no longer exists; whatever position the former assassin though Mukuro had put them in has shifted into sharing dolls and careening down a huge, lonely yard in a neon pink electric car.

  
The asthma is eventually kept under control with medication and time, but there’s still a struggle to pretend she’s a normal child, her other, adult self is always there; like a ghost tethered to her skin. No matter how easy M.M. makes it look, to pretend for everyone else that she’s a surprisingly well adjusted teenager, it makes Chrome _ache_ to try and ignore the people she’s lost. So she spends a lot of time hiding behind her cousin, sitting beside her, arms linked, because it’s so much easier to breathe just by being close to someone who understands.

  
The travels start as a graduation trip, hopping through Europe like bloodhounds, starved for another someone from back then, _anyone_ as long as they’re there to prove this isn’t a shared hallucination; a fever dream they conjured up to deal with emotionally absent parents and grand empty rooms.They write back home once in a while and take odd jobs here and there to keep the money flowing; to keep on moving, combing through streets and bars and market places for a head that would turn at the mere mention of the Vongola, no matter who they were. The Varia, even, Byakuran when Chrome feels like hope’s dangling off of Moher’s pretty cliffs and she’s sure she’d jump after it if it came to that. 

  
M.M.’s instinct is always better than hers, her attention laser focused on the smallest of things at the weirdest of times; the sweets at the shop window that used to be Ken’s favourite, a voice that might’ve belonged to Chikusa in this new world, a painting that somehow radiates the same obstinate, wild sadness Mukuro did. Yet, finding _him_ , the rich kid in a neglect fuelled rampage, buying shots for the entire club takes more luck than skill; and it’s even better luck to recognize Ken under the expensive suit.

  
His eyes are the same, even from a distance and Chrome’s so sorry for the way the slightest glimpse in their direction has him bent in half and weaving through the mass of bodies. She’s sorry for the tears that he doesn’t even seem to notice streaking down his cheeks and for how her touch makes him dry heave but she settles a hand light and soothing over his back anyway; M.M. watching over them like a hawk as she leads the way back out into the street.

  
Asking him about Chikusa or Mukuro only brings a fresh bout of sobs and asking him where he lives gets them a penthouse down town where they manage to get him to settle down some; curling to try and sleep in an assortment of uncomfortable positions, each in a different couch. Ken muttering something about the Estraneo and whispering under his breath that Mukuro has to exist in this world, he has to; he’d know what to do, he’d make them fit, he always had. Chrome has the presence of mind to pretend she can’t hear Ken mumbling Chikusa’s name in his sleep, or notice how M.M.’s eyes water every single time she looks at him tossing and turning, his legs dangling off the sofa like a cartoon character. She makes sure not to voice the vow repeating over and over in her mind like a prayer, but she plans to keep it anyway; she swears to find their missing pieces, to see Kokuyo again, and maybe this time, they’ll all find a way to belong together.


	4. strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something off about the stranger tapping repeatedly at his phone and pacing around; now and then the man, not exactly noteworthy except for how forcefully he jabs at the device, holds his phone up, squints at it, taps again in mid-air, and Hibari’s somehow sure he’s seen that expression of strained focus before.

It’s quiet here.

  
He sits at the kitchen table and waits for the carrots to glaze; his brother found the recipe online and never thought it’d take as long as it does so there’s an apologetic smile being thrown at him through the steam every few minutes. He doesn’t even like fucking carrots, vegetables are little more than side dishes, he’s deeply indifferent, but it makes his siblings happy. So he waits.

His sister hums next to him, a questioning sound that most likely means he’s zoned out of a conversation; when he looks at her though, she’s deep into a textbook, focused so hard that her glasses slip all the way off her nose.

His chuckle is immediate and mostly unintended, meant only for these two people to hear; one more proof of the rare intimacy being family allows him. Tetsuya laughs by the stove too, finally deeming the sweet concoction fit to serve before he carries all three plates to the table, giving him that look that makes him feel like he’s the younger brother.

  
“I thought you weren’t comfortable in crowds, Kyo”

Hibari doesn’t bother looking up from his meal because he’s known Kusakabe for two lives, and even if he’s never admitted it, he knows it must show in one way or another how he is glad to have found him of all people again. And the same goes for the quiet girl leaning over her book with a sly smile and smart eyes set on him like a cat about to pounce.

“This isn’t a crowd,” if he scoffs over his steak then it’s mostly out of routine than any real annoyance, “it’s a pack.”

  
He ignores the chuckles as he eats, and he doesn’t hurry, not even if he should’ve been opening the family inherited bar by now; after all they’ve had a slow month, apparently most afterhours activity in the area has dropped after Hibari remembered just who he once was in the middle of a robbery attempt.

Hibari knows he would’ve fought for his bar and the memories they made in it –of his sister falling asleep on the back couch during rush hour, of his brother helping father install the beer pump, of mother humming quietly as they wiped down tables at the end of the shift– but oh it sure helped to recover the muscle memory of the Demon of Namimori.

Kusakabe _is_ rushing through his meal though, so he has to get up, absently motioning for him to stay, he can open on his own; and this is his routine now, the creaky stairs down to the front, the fight with the rollup that always gets stuck in the same fucking place, because no matter who he was, who they all were, in this life they have to bring in money to eat someway. It’s days like this, when he feels particularly nostalgic for his former life, that he even misses the Vongola and their inflated pay grade.

  
He wonders offhandedly if Sawada and his guardians are somewhere this time around, that’s the other reason they kept the bar after their parents retired to live seaside; with this business he can not just monitor the neighbourhood for any criminal activity that may require his attention but also, he might catch a glimpse of a face long forgotten.

The metal finally unsticks after a particularly rough rattle, noisily moving upwards until Hibari’s blinded by the low sun over the surrounding residential area; the light’s bright enough for him to momentarily miss the figure standing in front of his hole in the wall whiskey bar like it’s actually waiting for him to open. Last time he checked they weren’t quite as popular to have costumers waiting outside, even if he _is_ late, but he fights the urge to tell the man to fuck off.

There’s something off about the stranger tapping repeatedly at his phone and pacing around; now and then the man, not exactly noteworthy except for how forcefully he jabs at the device, holds his phone up, squints at it, taps again in mid-air, and Hibari’s somehow sure he’s seen that expression of strained focus before. This is a problem, since if this person turns out to be a former classmate or someone else he met in this new life that he truly holds no interest in, then it’d be better to avoid interaction at all costs; but if the man is from that other time where there’s still some people he wanted to face, that he might even say he misses, then he’d be wasting an opportunity and a sparring partner.

  
He weighs this cost-benefit dilemma against his stubbornness and the answer is rather obvious, so he stays for another second, staring at the stranger until the man notices him.

“Hi! Uh, you have a phone?”

Hibari doesn’t react right away, there’s something in that crass way of addressing someone he has barely met that makes him feel like he’s lived this before.

“A landline, I mean,” the stranger steamrolls on and Hibari finally nods, “can I use it? I have no cell reception. What’s this? the edge of the world?”

  
The man laughs, ducking into the bar and going straight for the phone like he’s been in the place a million times before while Hibari simply steps out of the way because he _always_ _fucking does this_. He sees a flash of boxing gloves, a scar, a rush of blinding yellow and this is just his fucking luck.  


“You know, I didn’t recognize you at first,” he hears himself say it before he can think better of it, and the man doesn’t look a goddamn thing like he used to but the shrug of his shoulders as he hangs up and turns to glance around the bar is still the same.

“What? I’ve never…”

  
Kyoya can hear the threat of a chuckle in his own voice when he calls the man’s old name, and watches as the clear, startled recognition makes its way to grey eyes.


	5. family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The building somehow feels like home as soon as he steps inside, the first one he’s ever had.
> 
> He doesn’t have a reason for it, he doesn’t know anyone there –maybe it’s as simple as that - but it’s just right to be there, with the warmth of the first rate heating system seeping all the way down to his bones.

He feels like he has a hole in his chest, he has felt it all along; it’s how he’s lived his life, in a constant state of missing something or someone he doesn’t know.  
  
His parents busied themselves with finding excuses. He was just colicky, or bored. He didn’t have something to catch his attention and motivate him; that was all. And so started the endless parade of afterschool activities: swimming lessons, piano, spending days hyperfocused on being the best so he could get the prizes his parents waved at him like he was a particularly gifted pet.

Guitar and kick boxing as a teenager; advanced courses and college prep. Until he was so burned out that he slept one night out of three and the prizes and gifts meant nothing but the possibility of getting away from his family; because he couldn’t stand one more question about college when his entire life had been an unanswered cry for help.

  
He holds out though, not like he even knows how he did it but he does. He’s top of his class, the most promising graduate, an exhausted mess of a human performing the golden boy routine ‘cause he has nothing else. So when the folks pay for an apartment in one of the most expensive buildings in town, he chooses to take it as some sort of restitution for ignoring what was probably clinical depression for most of his life.

The building somehow feels like home as soon as he steps inside, the first one he’s ever had.  
  
He doesn’t have a reason for it, he doesn’t know anyone there –maybe it’s as simple as that - but it’s just right to be there, with the warmth of the first rate heating system seeping all the way down to his bones. It’s mostly inhabited by rich brats, the kind of people that you don’t see around much, even if they live right next door and it would’ve been the perfect place to work on the masters his parents keep waiting on with bated breath.

  
Except his mailbox is constantly overflowing with someone else’s liquor of the week subscription and various invitations to black tie events; someone who hasn’t been seen in a month, not even by the maintenance staff.  
  
And maybe he could’ve hold out for longer in this ridiculous balance of packages, waited out for whoever it was that lived in the penthouse above him to come get his mail. But his patience runs out when he comes home to find his cellphone bill soaked in pineapple liquor, the weight of UPS tower finally collapsed in on itself and leaking booze down onto his box.

He smiles, the final fate of this stupid situation catching him exactly in one of those days when the emptiness grows teeth and he’s been imagining he smashes people into doors and metro windows for a good six hours. So he bolts up the stairs, dripping pineapple bullshit all over twelve floors before he can even reign himself back in enough to stop feeling like his head is floating, to find only a closed door and a serious looking guy in a suit leaning into the buzzer.

“You know the guy who lives here?” the anger pretty much dies in his chest at the sight of him, dark eyes and an oddly familiar face.

He realizes it’s a stupid question, he does; but his chest fills with an ache he recognizes the more he looks at the man. A loneliness he’s grown to know as he knows himself.

“I’m an intern for his father, sent me to check on him,” the answer is polite enough even if the man doesn’t bother to turn to him, not right away.

When he does though, the guy does a double take.

  
“Is this in the job description?” he has to keep the conversation going, he _has_ to.  
  
“Not really,” the guy laughs and it sends him reeling, he knows that laugh, he knows this man, “Hey, haven’t I seen you be…?”   


The door flies open then, interrupting the question that somehow feels like another door, one that leads to whatever it is that has been eating away at him since he was old enough to realize it; and out comes a frazzled man, barely more than a boy, yelling something about groceries into a cellphone. A boy that freezes at the sight of them, let’s the phone clatter to the floor and makes a sound, almost like a sob, before he can find his voice.

“Kakipi?” he mumbles reaching for a suit sleeve, and the intern pulls back for half a second before the hand makes contact.  
  
Then he’s smiling, they both are, clinging to each other like they did every time they had to run out of a tight spot; wiggling out of the Vindice’s hold, one more step —the smallest step that still somehow feels like breathing free— away from the curse of the Estraneo.

“Mukuro?” it’s spoken in unison and they turn to him, both Ken and Chikusa, here, alive, with him. And it’s until he tries to speak that he realizes he’s crying.

He laughs too, because he’s supposed to be the uncaring one, the one used to be alone; these people only tools for whatever it is that he set to do at the time. He’s the one that should be strong, all the shit he went through only forging him, like a weapon.

Mukuro wonders when exactly did he start being so tired of lying to himself that this new life refused him the pleasure. Maybe he should be thankful for the chance to accept —to himself and to these two fools— that even if the nightmares followed him, so did his friends; and maybe that's enough to keep him fighting.

  
“Mukuro?!” the small voice from the cellphone makes them all jump “Ken! did you say Mukuro?!”  
  
Ken bends down, unable to wipe the smile off his face even through his tears, and picks up the phone.

“Get your asses back here, M.M., and bring cake.”


End file.
